Mobile technology is on the rise in hospitality and directly correlates with increased efficiency in all departments.
The hospitality industry is gradually starting to turn toward mobile technology for such tasks as guest engagement, housekeeping, maintenance, direct bookings, revenue management and other essential functions. This growing trend aligns with mobile phones becoming more central to daily life and gives rise to guests’ expectation that hotels will operate in kind. One primary reason for adoption of mobile technology in hospitality is to promote efficiencies without staff having to be tethered to a specific location in the hotel.
Though it has been slower than other industries to adopt mobile solutions, aversion to technology is receding because virtually everyone uses technology now, in some form or another.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be, as an industry, at the forefront leading edge of technology. Because customer demands are changing, that has forced the industry itself to accelerate adoption of some new technologies,” said Tanya Pratt, VP, strategy and product management, Opera Cloud, Oracle Hospitality.
“Travelers expect accommodation providers to be hyper-responsive and ‘always on,’ and as both hotelier savviness and competition grows, speed-to-market can now equate to thousands upon thousands in revenue either gained or lost,” added Jason Lugo with SiteMinder, makers of a revenue platform in a mobile app format.
Promoting Efficiencies
The flexibility that mobile technology brings is the ability to perform tasks from anywhere on the property. And cloud-based technology can usually be scaled up or down to suit the needs of any sized hotel, from independent boutiques to franchised brands. Most of the technologies on the market currently are easy to learn and use and some are highly configurable and can be integrated with other applications.
“There is no functional area on the property that will not benefit from using mobile technology,” Pratt said. Oracle’s products manage front office to back-office chores, from checking the status of a room to the sales team working an event. All of these features are designed to get things done more quickly, as the team can access all hotel data from anywhere.
“The advantages of mobile technology are most notable in areas of hotel management that are highly time-sensitive,” Lugo said, pointing specifically to payment, something that traditionally requires manual effort. “Through streamlined access to multiple features on one platform, SiteMinder’s technology helps hoteliers to build efficiencies, eliminate repetitive manual tasks and ensure all of their functions are working together towards one goal: maximizing revenue.”
David Fox, COO of Quore, said that improving staff communication to achieve quick solutions of problems is one of the foundations of its product, a cloud-based tool to streamline numerous hospitality operations. Anecdotally, he said that customers have reported performance improvement, such as saving 25 percent on housekeeping time; guest satisfaction scores have increased as well.
Why Efficiency Matters in Hospitality
Guest satisfaction is a key priority for hoteliers, and efficient levels of service is what will result in repeat customers. Improving operational efficiencies gives team members the ability to perform tasks more quickly and allows them to spend more time on guest-facing activities, which can lead to greater guest satisfaction.
“In order to reach their target customers, convert them, and ensure a positive experience, hotels don’t have the time to focus on manual, repetitive tasks that add no direct value to travelers. As competition grows, and in a climate of staff shortages, accommodation businesses need to focus on streamlining what is predictable so that they can pour their energy into growing an accommodation business that guests love,” Lugo said.
Job performance and efficiency are often synonymous in the hotel world, particularly when there are so many moving parts. After a pandemic that saw a mass exodus of labor in hospitality, the industry is still trying to recover, and resources can still be a problem. “Hotels are having to do the same or, odds are, more with fewer people, and the only way you can achieve that is if you get really, really efficient at the tasks you can perform. You can automate tasks or allow people to do tasks in a faster way. That will lead them to accomplish more than they would have done in the past. That efficiency makes them better at their jobs that they would have had to do in the past anyway,” Pratt said.
“If you ask most people in the software industry that caters to hospitality, the issue is going to be the challenge around resources. If you’ve got a piece of technology that can help a staffer do more with limited resources, then that will be a win for them. They don’t have as many people as they used to have, and people don’t stick around as much. Something easy to use and easy to learn is a tremendous benefit,” Fox said.
This article was originally published in the May edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.